When Life Changes, Priorities Change.

Let us start at the beginning. When life changes, priorities change.

My significant other and I were comfortable. We had talked about moving for years, but it just was not in the cards because, if I am being truthful, we never made it a priority. There was always a reason to stay. Part of that was because I started a job three years ago that I absolutely loved. It was the first job I could seriously say I loved, and it paid decently. Joey was also in a job where he could really use his skill set. He is a senior technical architect and very good at what he does. He did not necessarily love his job, and it could be incredibly stressful, but he was damn good at it. Even with all the stress, he stayed there for sixteen years.

For probably the last ten years, we talked about moving. We always wanted to go somewhere else, but our life was comfortable. Our kids had a good upbringing. They never went without. We had jobs, a home, routines, and a life we knew. Then the kids graduated, left for college, moved out, and started living their own lives. Even after that, we stayed comfortable. We kept choosing comfort over moving for a lot of different reasons. There was always something that made staying easier than taking the leap.

Until everything changed suddenly.

It started when Joey lost his job. There was no warning and no indication it was coming. After sixteen years, he was called into a meeting and let go. During that same meeting, they admitted he was great at what he did and actually told him that if he decided to do contract work, he should let them know because they would hire him.

Seriously, what?

The company is on the verge of collapse, and somehow it made sense to upper management to get rid of the people who had been there the longest, knew the most about their positions, and also happened to have the biggest salaries. Their solution was about money, so they decided to get rid of people who knew their jobs, could solve problems without question, and had spent years helping keep the company out of crisis. I am not a business person, but that feels a little like business suicide to me.

Especially because the people left behind do not necessarily know what they are doing if something major happens on the technical side. I will not go into all the details, but I know this from years of watching it happen. Whenever Joey took a vacation, he never really got a vacation. They would call him because something broke and the people who were supposed to be handling it could not figure it out. Sometimes it was something complicated. Sometimes it was something surprisingly simple. Either way, the people who were on call or set to be the back up...called Joey.

But anyhow, here we are. Our comfort is gone, and our peace has been shaken.

Now we are trying to rebuild and figure out what comes next, and let me tell you, it is hard. I think part of what makes it so hard is that most of us were raised believing in this idea of "job security." Work hard, be dependable, become valuable, stay loyal, learn your job, and become the person people can count on. Somewhere along the way, many of us were taught that if we did all of those things, we would somehow be safe.

Come to find out, that is kind of a lie.

A company can let you go at any time. You can be new, or you can have been there for sixteen years. You can be amazing at what you do. You can be the person everyone calls when something goes wrong. You can be loyal, dependable, and good at your job, and none of that guarantees that someone in management will not make a decision that puts your name on the chopping block because what it comes down to, is not experience, it is money.

And I think there is another lesson in that too, one I am still learning myself. You can be the kindest person. You can be thoughtful. You can be the biggest team player in the room. You can be honest, dependable, and genuinely care about the people around you. Those are good qualities, and I do not think we should lose them just because the world does not always reward them.

But there are also times when you have to make decisions for yourself.

Not because you want to hurt someone. Not because you want to screw someone over or throw a wrench into someone else's plans. Sometimes you simply have to choose what is best for you and your family, even when that choice might be inconvenient for someone else.

I think a lot of us struggle with that, especially when we have spent years being the dependable one. We worry about who will be affected if we leave, what will happen if we say no, or whether someone will think differently of us for choosing ourselves for once. But the truth is, the company will make the decision it believes is best for the company. Other people will make the decisions they believe are best for their lives. At some point, we have to give ourselves permission to do the same.

That does not mean becoming selfish or uncaring. It means understanding that loyalty should not require you to sacrifice every possibility for your own life.

That realization has forced us to look at ours differently. For years, moving was something we talked about doing someday. We talked about where we might go, what life might look like somewhere else, and what we would do when the timing was right. But there was always something keeping us comfortable enough to stay exactly where we were.

Now the comfort that kept us here has been disrupted, and as scary as that is, maybe there is an opportunity hidden somewhere inside it.

Maybe this is our chance to stop waiting for the perfect time. Maybe this is the moment we finally ask what we want the next part of our life to look like instead of simply continuing the life we already know.

I do not know where we will end up yet. I do not know exactly what comes next, and there is definitely some fear that comes with that. But there is also a little bit of excitement starting to find its way in.

Sometimes life changes your priorities because you choose to change them. Other times, life changes them for you.

Either way, maybe the ending of one comfortable chapter is simply the beginning of something we never would have been brave enough to choose before.

A Moment to Reflect

Sometimes we stay where we are simply because life is comfortable enough that there is no real reason to move. Then something happens that takes the choice out of our hands and forces us to look at everything differently. Change can be frightening, especially when it arrives through loss, but it can also reveal possibilities we were too comfortable to consider before.

Is there something in your life that has changed unexpectedly and made you question what you really want next?